Path 2

Path 2

Dish No. 48: Taïm’s Sabich

September 13, 2010

Welcome to 100 Dishes to Eat Now, Fork in the Road’s handy list of some of our favorite dishes — old standbys and new finds alike — compiled daily.

Today’s pick: The Sabich ($6.25) at Taïm.

222 Waverly Place
212-691-1287

While Taïm excels at falafel, it’s best known to aubergine lovers as the home of the mighty Sabich. Slabs of eggplant are fried into crisp, silken submission and layered into a yawning pita — white or whole-wheat, your choice — along with shredded cabbage, Israeli salad (diced tomatoes, cucumbers, and parsley), hummus, and a sliced hard-boiled egg.

After it’s doused with amba sauce (a pickled mango condiment that deserves wider renown in New York), the cashier hands the Sabich to you, and that’s when the fun of figuring out how to eat it begins. It’s an abundant thing, to say the least, and it demands a bit of strategizing, unless you want its contents all over your face or piled in your lap.

But it’s a sandwich that’s worth the mess: The savory warmth of the eggplants, the cool rejoinder of the salad, the crunch of the cabbage, the creamy congress between the egg and the hummus, and the pungent snap of the amba sauce bestow upon the Sabich an embarrassment of sensory and textural riches. It’s a testament not only to the restaurant’s expertise with eggplant, but also to its generosity of spirit.